Hell yes, prosecute them

The most bizarre reaction to come out of Tuesday's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report has to be the calls, mostly from liberals, for Obama to pardon everyone involved.

Yes, I'm not kidding. I suppose we must take it on faith that the people making these claims are not just doing it because they support the use of torture, but it's hard to see any other sensible rationale for this position.

Here's a sampler:

In the Times, ACLU national president Anthony Romero says: The spectacle of the president’s granting pardons to torturers still makes my stomach turn. But doing so may be the only way to ensure that the American government never tortures again.

In Slate Jamelle Bouie makes the same point: Besides, if we’re trying to keep this from happening again, we don’t want punishment as much as we want to restore the consensus against torture. With explicit pardons, you can send the message that torture was illegal (and as Romero notes, signal to those “considering torture in the future that they could be prosecuted”) without taking legal action against the architects. And, as Bernstein argues, you can give generous pardons and lessen the officials’ “reputations as bad guys.”

And also in Slate, Eric Posner says: But Obama’s best argument for letting matters rest is the principle against criminalizing politics. This is the idea that you don’t try to gain political advantage by prosecuting political opponents—as governments around the world do when authoritarian leaders seek to subvert democratic institutions. Of course, if a Republican senator takes bribes or murders his valet, the government should prosecute him. But those cases involve criminal activity that is unrelated to the public interest. When the president takes actions that he sincerely believes advance national security, and officials throughout the government participate for the same reason, then an effort to punish the behavior—unavoidably, a massive effort that could result in trials of hundreds of people—poses a real risk to democratic governance.

Before we consider these arguments, let's just review what the CIA and the Bush administration did in their torture campaign:

They subjected five detainees to forcible anal rape in the guise of nutrition and hydration, resulting in lasting physical injuries.

They killed a man by stripping him, chaining him to a concrete floor in freezing conditions, and leaving him there until he died of hypothermia.

Beginning the evening of March 18, 2003, KSM began a period of sleep deprivation, most of it in the standing position, which would last for seven and a half days, or approximately 180 hours.

They repeatedly lied about what they were doing and its effectiveness to Congress and the American public.

While it's to be expected that Republicans will rush to support the most vile crimes committed at Bush's behest, and they have, it is beyond inconceivable that Democrats or civil libertarians should take the same position.

But let's consider the proffered arguments as though they deserve to be taken seriously.

First, Romero claims that issuing pardons may prevent the future use of torture. The reasoning seems to be that issuing a pardon is an unequivocal statement that the conduct was illegal, and it will send a message to future torturers and their bosses that they'd better not do it again. Yes sir, nothing deters future bad behavior like issuing a statement that there are no consequences for that behavior, right?

But what of the unequivocal statement of criminality? What of it? He uses Ford's pardon of Nixon as an example (and you will never convince me that there wasn't a deal for that pardon in advance, probably before he picked Ford to be vice president), but Nixon went to his grave proclaiming that he didn't do anything wrong except to give his political enemies the ammunition they needed to get him, and that "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal."

Second, Bouie argues that issuing pardons will "reinstate the [bipartisan] consensus against torture. The problem is, this consensus is wholly imaginary. Look at what the Republicans are saying now: everything the CIA did was right, they just should have done more of it. They just don't oppose torture; they don't see anything wrong with it as long as it's the Americans who are doing it. Look at Lindsay Graham, whose support for torture hearkens back to the Spanish Inquisition. Nothing Obama does, from pardons up to giving each one of these torturers the Presidential Medal of Freedom, will make the Republicans turn against torture.

Bouie also makes this very weird statement, quoting Jonathan Bernstein: pardons will lessen the torturers' reputations as bad guys! That's really what we're concerned about? That someone will think ill of a government official who orders waterboarding, anal rape, and slamming detainees against a concrete wall? If you're worried about making these guys look bad I suggest that your moral judgment is seriously deficient.

Finally, Posner, whose biggest concern seems to be that pardons will keep the issue from being politicized. This is a Republican Party whose members on the committee couldn't be bothered to participate, much less seriously consider the merits and morality of torture.

No, rather than follow these pusillanimous moral cowards, I prefer the views of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who said: "In all countries, if someone commits murder, they are prosecuted and jailed. If they commit rape or armed robbery, they are prosecuted and jailed. If they order, enable or commit torture — recognized as a serious international crime — they cannot simply be granted impunity because of political expediency," he said.

And the special rapporteur on terrorism and human rights, who said: international law prohibits granting immunity to public officials who allow the use of torture, and this applies not just to the actual perpetrators but also to those who plan and authorize torture.

Obama did a great thing by immediately stopping the Bush torture program. He must follow the legal and moral logic of his position and prosecute those responsible.

Torture, finally

I had hoped to post this yesterday, the ninth anniversary of Rational Resistance, but some kind of attack temporarily knocked both Rational Resistance and Green Mountain Daily off the air last night. Nevertheless, the release of yesterday's torture report by the Senate Intelligence Committee is way too important to overlook.

The shortest summary I can provide goes like this: everything we said about torture by the Bush administration was true, and everything they said about torture was a lie.

They did it all the time, without regard to need.
It didn't work.
Other, non-torture approaches to interrogation did work.

We've been talking about torture by the Bush administration for almost the entire nine years we've been here, so it's almost hard to believe there is anything new to say about it, but that's just not true. Mother Jones and other sources have reported on new outrages that none of us would have anticipated.

For example:

 The CIA used previously unreported tactics, including "rectal feeding" of detainees (p. 100, footnote 584):



The administration spokespeople, including now federal judge Jay Bybee, liked to Congress about the nature and effectiveness of the torture program.

At least one detainee died of hypothermia after being held in cold temperatures shackled to a concrete floor. And George Tenet directly lied about it when he was asked on 60 Minutes.

As I say, you should read as much as you can about this, and I guarantee that you will be shocked.

The fact remains: we were right, and everyone working for Bush lied about everything they said.

No difference?

UPDATE: This guy has now filed a judicial conduct complaint against himself.

Of course, there's nothing stopping him from just retiring, right? Except that the black guy would get to appoint his replacement.

It's an election year, and as November draws near we can count on the usual drivel from people who claim there's no difference between the two parties and there's not a dime's worth of difference between President Obama and whichever assclown winds up with the Republican nomination.

So I'll just point something out.

In his eight years as president George W. Bush appointed two Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States (including one Chief Justice), 62 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 261 judges to the United States district courts.

The Supreme Court appointments get most of the attention, but the lower court judges are also important, not least because they form the pool from which Supreme Court justices and Circuit Court judges are frequently drawn. We also know that Bush was notably more successful getting judges appointed and confirmed than President Obama has been.

When we have a Republican president this is the kind of appointee we get:

HELENA — Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers. Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush and received his commission in 2001 and has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008.

The subject line of the email, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: "A MOM'S MEMORY."
The forwarded text reads as follows:
"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

I won't reprint the supposed joke, but even this guy admitted that it was a racist joke (while denying that he is a racist).

This guy was appointed to the court a mere six months before Bush was installed in the White House by the corrupt, Rehnquist/Scalia Supreme Court.

Vote for whoever you want, but remember the consequences.

Bush's Gulf of Tonkin resolution

David Corn has a great review of the Poodle's new memoir in which he recounts a fact, apparently incontrovertible, that Blair completely ignores in his detailed, 700-page book. The only rational explanation is that it proves that everything else Blair says is a lie, and that he knows the war was a fraud from the beginning.

You may remember the time, shortly before the invasion, when Blair flew to the United States to meet with Bush in the Oval Office. The gist of the story is that there are notes from this meeting that demonstrate that not only had Bush already made the decision to invade, but that he broached the idea of creating a phony provocation to give Blair and the U.N. cover to support the invasion.

So this proves what? That Bush is a lying sack of shit? Of course, we all already knew that.

This is a book, though, in which Blair calls Bush the most courageous politician he has ever known. Because of this meeting, Blair knew that the pretense for the war was a fraud, and he observed Bush's thought process in concocting a fraud to support the war.

By failing to even discuss this story, Blair proves that he, like Bush, is a worthless liar.

Random Thoughts

They might not each be worth their own diary, but I didn't want to ignore them.

1. One big difference between Obama and Bush:

Bush lies, Obama tells the truth. Say what you like about Obama's war plans (and most of us around here disagree with them), but at least Obama put the costs in the budget instead of trying to pretend they aren't part of the deficit.

2. More good news for Evan Bayh wannabe Harold Ford.

Picks up the coveted Karl Rove endorsement.

3. Economy drives booze sales downmarket.

According to one conoisseur, "we've switched from Bud Light to a lesser brand."

Rational Resistance wonders: Is that even possible?

U.S. Torture

“We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture,” Bush said.

I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m [13 feet by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed....

The truth is out. The guy who told the truth was Abu Zubaydah, one of the planners of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The guy who lied was the President of the United States.

What we hear about is waterboarding, but that isn't half of it. It isn't even the beginning. Throw out all the allegations of waterboarding, and what U.S. forces did was still torture under any definition, or at least any definition worthy of respect from a civilized people. In other words, any definition except that promulgated by torture apologist John Yoo. The findings come from a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and they are damning. You should read the entire article in the New York Review of Books to get a full understanding of what happened, but even what little I have room for here is shocking.

The report details other techniques, used in combination, including constant cold temperatures, loud noises, forced standing (one prisoner was forced to stand by being handcuffed to the ceiling of his cell for an entire month), repeated beatings, sleep deprivation (water was sprayed in their faces whenever they dozed off), prolonged exposure to light or dark, prisoners being repeatedly slammed against the walls of their cells, prisoners being handcuffed to chairs or hospital beds, naked, for weeks on end. It seems endless.

Remember what Bush said. "We do not torture." He lied.

Remember a few other things. Remember the "ticking time bomb" scenario. We have constantly heard that the euphemistically named enhanced interrogation techniques have protected us against further terrorist attacks. This is almost certainly a lie.

Or, on another tack, remember the gloating tone with which the American sources reported that Abu Zubaydah folded immediately after being waterboarded, with the unstated message that he clearly wasn't man enough to take it. Now see the report from John Kiriakou, the CIA officer who is in a position to know:

He resisted. He was able to withstand the water boarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds.... And a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured. And from that day on he answered every question just like I'm sitting here speaking to you....

We hear claims about bringing the criminals to justice. When those claims are made, they generally refer to Osama bin Laden and his accomplices. Criminals they are, no question about it. Justice, though? When will we see Rice, Ashcroft, Cheney, Kiriakou, and Bush prosecuted?